HOPES, FEARS & OPPORTUNITIES (PART UNO)

At the start of the term we were asked to fill in a form about our hopes, fears and opportunities concerning ourselves in the ever looming future. It was a chance to really think about how we can take full advantage of anything that comes about in the forthcoming months that we can benefit from. I hadn't really sat down and thought about it before but think it was an important exercise that I have benefited from that needed doing.

My biggest hopes for the future were that I would push my drawing skills to the next level and generally try a lot harder when working on projects. As well as this I intended on boosting the publicity of my work. Not sure if publicity is the right word to chose but I wanted to showcase my work to a wider audience through the means of a website. Finally, I wanted to meet more people in the art world outside of uni by going to more organised art talks and exhibitions, especially ones that were in Manchester.

So far I think I'm pretty confident in saying I can tick these off my list now as I seem to be slowly making my way through them.  I have definitely put more thought and effort in to the way I work especially when concerned with the last few briefs. I seem to be putting in more time outside of uni and drawing because I want to rather then having too. Having done more independent work I think I am beginning to benefit from the time I have put in as my drawing skills seem to be gradually improving so it just goes to show that practice really does make perfect. However I'm far from perfect yet and there's still a long way to go but I've got the ball rolling now.

As far as websites are concerned I've got two on the go at the moment. One with cargocollective (a template based site that gives you the opportunity to network with other artists/photographers/designers) that I'm pretty happy with and then another one with a paid URL that a friend helped me make. Cargo is a good way to ease your way in to something that was very alien to me and pretty idiot proof but it still can be quite confusing ha. The other site that I'm using still has a lot of work that needs doing so I'm treating it as a little on going project where I'm trying to get my head around HTML coding and other techy bits. Hopefully in the next few months it'll be up to scratch in comparison to other peoples.

Over the last few months, I've tried to juggle the stresses of multiple projects with a social life that I can gain from as I think its dead important to take time out from doing work. I've been to a number of social events in and around Manchester as well as some in Preston and Leeds. These have consisted of BlabMini, D&AD Lectures, Portfolio visits to name but a few. I think that as well as this its highly beneficial to have more of a social life that involves the work you're making so I've tried to get to places like Common and Trof at least once a week to meet other people in the same boat as me that could hopefully lead to job opportunities and possible collaboration work. It's also a good chance to moan about stuff as well to people that can relate to what you're rambling on about as well.

My biggest academic fear was that my grade would drastically slip due to my journal not being very good. I'm not the most confident writer in the world and found it a bit of a struggle when it came to writing a large body of text. It's not that I'm incapable, the ideas are there they just don't sound as good when down on paper. It was a daunting task as the last piece of work similar to this I did was probably my GCSEs.  There was also not having a strong enough portfolio of work but more importantly the fear that I would loose interest in briefs and not get work done.

I think that all the work I've produced since starting back in September definitely shows my progression as an artist and that I've enjoyed working on them. I think if anything I'm enjoying doing what I do more so then I have. Its been important for me to stay motivated and interested in the topics that I've been working on and feel that I've landed pretty lucky with the work set. My portfolio is starting to become much stronger as the more I'm producing, the more early work that I'm not happiest with can be removed. After having portfolio viewings with various studios I'm also beginning to feel much more confident about my work but still and probably always will, think that there's always room for improvement. With the journal, I'm still holding my breath on that one. I've got no idea how well/bad I've done but as always I'm trying to keep a optimistic head on and try to not let it worry me too much. It hasn't been handed in yet but my draft has been submitted so I'm waiting on feedback now. Fingers crossed.

The opportunities that I wanted to take advantage of most over the course of the year were going to more social networking events (as I spoke about that earlier I won't bore you by repeating myself), taking advantage of any free time to produce personal work and the biggest thing for me was to make the most of having a studio at uni that's available pretty much five days a week.

If I'm being truly honest, the spare time that I've had so far this year has been pretty sparse so any time there has been any free I'm usually trying to catch up on sleep. Come every September I seem to turn almost completely nocturnal and seem to work best after about 6pm. This had consequently lead to most of my free days being taken up with sleep, sleep and then some more sleep. In saying that I have had time to work on some personal work to keep me ticking over, perhaps just not as much as I would have liked to. There's plenty of time to do so over the Christmas holiday. I've been trying hard to get into the studio much earlier this year because I wasn't ready to work when 10am came around last year. The lack of sleep means that if I'm turning up to start uni at 10am I probably won't get started until about thirty minutes later. To turn this around I've been arriving usually a good hour before I'm timetabled in so that I'm fresh and raring to start the day. Having spent the last two years with a close group of talented and lovable people I've realised that it's not going to last forever (although I'd sometimes like to think it could). I'm trying to take full advantage of having a large desk with boards to work on whenever I need to for free and a good working environment. It can be hard work at home when your desk is in the same room as your bed to get motivated so I've tried to use uni to its full potential when it comes to enthusiasm. This lead me to thinking long and hard about my aims after I graduate.

My aims for the year were to have visited working practitioners with my portfolio and to think about possibly organising a group of chums together to get a studio together after uni has finished rather then leaving it last minute. As I mentioned earlier I love working in a social, friendly environment and couldn't think of many things better then getting a studio with my friends and working professionally like that. I tend to work best int he company of others so think it could have the potential to really push me as an illustrator.

As for the remaining months ahead of me, the most important thing for me to focus on now is my final major project. It runs over a course of 18weeks so I need to thoroughly think about the work I am going to set myself to ensure I don't loose interest during the long working period. I don't tend to work well on longer projects as I set myself too much work to complete so this is a chance to either overcome this difficulty or to break up the time through shorter pieces of work to keep my mind fresh. I'm dead excited about it and can't wait to start as hopefully it should be a collection of the best work I'll have produced so far. Bring it on!

D&AD FUND RAISER.

It would seem that D&AD New Blood can play a massive part in getting your fresh, post uni face noticed in the creative world. Having spoken to a good handful of graduates, there's been quite a mixed response when the topic of New Blood is brought up. The majority or people came to the conclusion that it can be hugely beneficial depending on the style of work you produce and if you put the effort into it. Having recently spoken to Lord Whitney about my portfolio they suggested I took advantage of the opportunity to go and really make the most of it as some of my work would benefit from it. 

Having got together with other members of the 3rd year illustration group that were interested in show casing their work, we decided we needed to raise cash, a lot of it, and as quick as possible. As far as I'm aware, college's funding has been drastically cut over the last few years so if we want to go down to London to showcase out work it'll be up to ourselves to raise the money needed. As well as us drawing folk, the graphics bunch are wanting to take part as well so are splitting the costs in half which is a massive relief on out behalf knowing we can share the load.

 After a short meeting we decided to take advantage of the festive times and make some lovely screen printed Christmas cards and a range of delicious hand baked treats. The group was split in two groups, specially delegated make sure everything ran smoothly. The cake sale made an absolute killing at college and I think we managed to make about £40 in the end. Just shows that Stockport people love cake.

The idea behind the screen printed cards was mainly that it wouldn't cost us anything other then the materials to print on. It was also a good opportunity for people to have a go at this process as quite a few people in the group hadn't really had the chance to play with it in the past. It brought us together nicely as a team and we had a dead good day in the print room helping each other out making the prints. We managed to get a successful little routine working so that everyone had a helping hand but we weren't getting under each others feet and overall it worked really well.

It was especially good to see how people's art turned out through the means of screen printing especially if it wasn't their usual means of working. It gave the final result much more charisma and life where you could see the process behind the images. Some designs were a bit of a pain to line up and others didn't print perfectly but I think that's not necessarily a bad thing at all. The mis-registration and broken tones played to the whole hand generated image making side of things and made each card much more personal. 

Doms card: first and second layers of ink.

On a whole, the coming together as a team and working on our own live brief worked really well. The people interested in D&AD showed real dedication and put lots of effort in to it to get the best result we could in order to raise funds. Once the cards were dried, signed and paired up with envelopes, we sent them off to a print fair with Mil in the hope that we could sell the bulk of what we'd made. It turns out that the weather was massively against us and not many people turned up unfortunately resulting in not many being sold. However, we didn't let this phase us so each took a handful and bullied our friends and family into buying them even if they'd already bought others. It was an nice eye opener to how we could do something similar in the near future and later for our final exhibition.

A selection of prints and my finished card.

LORD WHITNEY: PORTFOLIO VISIT NUMERO 3

Last week I went to visit Lord Whitney (see previous posts if you don't know who they are) in their cold but creative warehouse studio in Leeds. I was massively grateful to both Bek and Amy for taking time out of their busy schedule to have a look at my work so close to Christmas and a week before they were due to feature an installtion at the Dead Sea Mob night at Night&Day in Manchester.

The studio pre decoration stage and 70's style xmas tree.

As I mentioned earlier, the studio itself was situated in the top floor of a disused warehouse and man alive was it nippy. It was full of weird and wonderful costumes (including hand made signs, life sized landscapes and plastic pimped out crows) and props that made you feel that you could of been in the backstage of a film/tv set like the Mighty Boosh. There were a few gas and electric heaters to huddle round to keep warm but more importantly it was a good excuse to have cups of tea, which hit the spot. Thanks again girls! Having acclimatised myself to the conditions of the tundra like studio, like other visits in the past, I spoke about each project in my portfolio focusing on ideas generation and process. However, unlike the past two visits, I felt that I gained tonnes more creative feedback and left with lots of things to consider when working in future. It was a very relaxed few hours where we chatted about things they thought I might like/be interested in outside of the art world that could strengthen my work. This ranged from Victorian circuses, short stories, films and more importantly Hendricks Gin! It was dead nice that they did this as they could of quite easily looked at my work and left it at that but they seemed to get pretty excited about future prospects within my work.

As far as I can remember they were generally positive about my work and had nothing but kind words to say about it. It was a real compliment to hear that from a creative team that are doing so well for themselves and has made me really think hard about how I could benefit from working in a small team in the last few months of uni to prep me for leaving. They were also pretty pleased with the work I produced for the brief they set for us earlier in the month so this again has swayed me towards collaborating in the future as I worked with Jordan O'brien on it.

Overall, I had a most pleasant time with them (and their intern) and left feeling really positive and happy with my work but more importantly excited about cracking on with projects discussed. I've got a lot of ideas that I'd hopefully like to blast out over the Christmas holiday including a much more personal business all thanks to the creative input of Lord Whitney. I would like to think I could get in touch with them again about future work and they'd be just as welcoming about it. In conclusion, I feel like I gained a lot from this portfolio visit and can see why we're encouraged to seek professional advice about our work.

BLAB MINI 3.

On friday night, having rushed back from uni and grabbed a bratwurst from the German Christmas market I took a swift stroll down to Deaf Institute for the third BlabMini.

BlabMini is a monthly meetup where Manchester based creative types can meet up, have a drink and socialise with other artists (organised by Northern Digital). Its a chance to meet face to face with each other rather then via the wonderful world wide web and meet new people, clients and maybe land yourself a place, chance to collaborate or even job. They've also introduced guest speakers to come and talk about a designated topic for give or take 20mins. The £5 entry fee also entitled you to free admission for the 90's dance night upstairs and a free beverage of your choice. I had 2 though.

Anyway, this months theme was "Things I've Seen", where each speaker had to talk about anything the they considered to relevant to them.  Altogether there were five speakers consisting of Kate Towey, Simon Griffin, Jeffery Bowman, Katie Moffat and Jake Smith with sponsors of Eskimo Creative, Shillington College and Orchard. As well as this, they were raffles and competitions to win some awesome prizes (£50 of itunes vouchers won by Jordan O'brien) and the best competition was best christmas jumper where Dom came runner up. Sorry Dom. Yours was best the other guy just new more people. Back to the talks. Katie Moffat opened the stage with a short but moving presentation on the 9/11 attacks against the Twin Towers and how a competition was created for architects/designers to come up with ideas for a memorial site. This was followed up with Kate Towey making a clear point how much she disliked brown bananas then Jeffery Bowman's love for hill walking. Jake and Simon tied up the evening with a passion for film/music videos and how being unorganised and unprepared can work in your favour.

The whole vibe of the evening was friendly and festive, and an awesome chance to chat to working designers. What I enjoyed most about the evening was the generous turnout from current/post Stockport College students. It's not often that over the last three years we've met as a group outside of college so it was a great opportunity to socialise in the outside world. A few of us stayed around afterwards for a couple more drinks then moved on to another bar.

The fourth BladMini is to take place again at Deaf in the new year at some point. Overall, a brilliant way to spend a thursday eve with a good crowd.

LORD WHITNEY.

On Monday we had the privilege of being visited by the lovely folk from Lord Whitney gave us a lecture and live brief. Lord Whitney consists of the humorous and fun works of Amy Lord and Rebekah Whitney. The two met at Leeds whilst studying at uni and combined their skills as 3D illustrators (prop and costume making) and photographers to create life size illustrations and installations.

Their relaxed and friendly lecture talked us through the journey they've been on since leaving uni in 06 through to present day client work. The key point that stood out most to me was that it doesn't come easy. If you don't put 110% in then don't expect to get anywhere. The girls said then when it felt like time to call it a day you've got to keep on pushing through time and time again. This is what separates you from the other arty people out there and gets you the work. Other then this it was evident that a big part of their work is about having fun and doing things that make you smile. When speaking to them afterwards its completely evident that their works screams their personalities and lust for making the unusual.

It was refreshing to hear that LW found their feet just before graduating and haven't worked like this forever. Having completed a full circle of working they spoke of how their work is scarily similar to things they did as kids and realised that they enjoy the work they make just like they always did. I feel I'm just starting to get my head screwed on work wise myself in the direction I'm taking things so it was cool to hear they they weren't initially job smart (without sounding too harsh) before finishing their degrees. Keeping their friends in a close niche seemed massively important to them and the stressed that working with them and keeping in touch regularly is a must. Even if its just a pint of tea or collaborating its always a good excuse to meet up with old chums. As I've made a tight little group of friends whilst at uni I have every intention in the world to stay in touch with them and hopefully join forces in the art world at some point.

My favorite installation to do with the art industry trying to drag you down. Made from many purple sleeping bags and polystyrene bowls.

Later in the day we had the opportunity to chat with the girls as they set us a week long brief to do with compound nouns. As a big part of their work is about the process of making their installations and making it obvious how they've achieved it they stressed on the point to capture how we go about completing the brief visually. With LW consisting of a duo, myself and Jordan decided to team up and tackle the brief as a pair. It's a little out of my comfort zone but think it'll be a nice change to work slightly differently.

To sum up an inspirational Monday, we couldn't have had two nicer people come in and talk to us about themselves and their work. If I end up working in a similar way they do then I think the next few years are going to be something to look forward to. 

MUSIC: PORTFOLIO VISIT 2

So as I mentioned earlier, when in Preston we had the opportunity to book slots with professionals to talk about portfolios. I managed to talk to Jordan, who works for Music creative agency based in Manchester.

As I'd briefly spoken to Craig Oldham when he came to Uni last month, and seeing he was completely sound I hoped Jordan would be the same. I was right. We were pretty limited with time so I think I only had ten minutes to quickly go through my work. I talked about each project explaining the fundamental elements of each brief and the reasons for me choosing to execute them the way I did.  

Having blasted through the majority of my work we started to chat about the target audience I was trying to appeal to as my work seems to have quite a morbid and dark theme to a lot of it. Having discussed that it was quite mixed but some was aimed at children he suggested either lightening my working style up a little or think about the intended audience in more depth (i.e changing it). He liked the illustrations I had produced for the Macmillan books but thought they were slightly too intimidating for smaller children. I had produced the work in the particular style because I was trying to make a book that I would have liked at that age but in looking back perhaps the weirder, older stuff appealed to me more.

Having taken his advice on board I think I've realised that rather then tackling a brief all guns blazing I need to break it down critically. Jordan mentioned that as he wasn't an illustrator himself that he could only give me his opinion on my portfolio rather then critical feedback but I think he managed to do this subconsciously a I feel I did benefit from seeing him.

 For future reference I think I'd also like to try and get a viewing with and illustration agency, this way I'm covering more types of the industry and not limiting myself. Overall it was a brief but positive viewing that left me with some good ideas for upcoming work.

PRESTON DOES D&AD.

Last week a few of us creative folk jumped on a train and made our way across to Preston for a most pleasant day that D&AD were putting on all around the university campus (which I thoroughly enjoyed). It was a great eye opener for what D&AD can offer students, as I didn't really have a clue what they were really about other then the awards but more importantly the whole event didn't cost a penny. The day was packed full of lectures, workshops and a portfolio surgery with helpful advice professionals that thankfully involved no operating.

I found the morning lecture really valuable as one of the D&AD organisers (Rianan I think) opened the talk introducing what they’ve done past, present but more specifically future plans including the White Pencil awards. It was pretty insightful to see the behind the scene side of the awards and just how much work and effort goes into putting the awards together.

Jack Renwick followed this up with an inspirational talk on how she’d worked her way up through the industry to become an art director, former creative director at The Partners and creator of a her own agency. It was nice to hear a talk from such a down to earth person that you could relate to. She gave advice on how to deal with clients and how to really push your ideas across and create a bond with them, working as part of a team being crucial and your working showing your personality. It gave me faith that I could hopefully do something similar if I’m dedicated enough and try hard. Even though she made it clear that she’d started from rock bottom and climbed her way up the mountain of job positions she made it sound like a pretty smooth process. I hope that when it comes to my turn, similar opportunities pop up so frequently for me. Jack is one of the judges at D&AD and has won awards herself in the past as a student and work associated with The Partners. 

Jack started out her career in the art industry by making wheelchair ramps and sign designs then moving her way up by getting work for The Partners (design agency based in London and New York). She talked about some of the projects that shes worked on involving typography, corporate design work and logo designs.

One piece that I really liked was a brief to create packaging for Indian flavoured sausages. As well as making designs for the outer packaging they focused on giving each indivudal falavour of sasuage its own style. They did this by printed onto the skin of the meat using an edible ink to look like henna tattoos. I think this work shows how to stand out against the rest and that they really pushed the idea as far as they could. In doing so they've created something thats pretty unique and shows they really care about their work and reputation. 

I found her talk really inspirational and the ideas used massive imaginitve. You can tell she takes pride in her work and puts passion into it and it definitely pays off. I look forward to seeing what the future holds with her new solo agency.  


Later on there was a workshop hosted by the Manchester based design agency WeAreThoughtful. Unfortunately, at this point I was dying of starvation and had to take a swift pit stop at the nearest Wetherspoons to refuel myself for my portfolio visit with Jordan from Music Studios (more to come on this). The portfolio surgeries were an opportunity for students from across the region to have a chat and gain some industry input from a gathering of great design agencies. The advice was offered from The Chase, Music, Because Studio and many more. It was also a chance to talk to other students that are completely in the same boat on how they’re coping with the trials and tribulations of third year and preparation for the future. It’s reassuring to hear that you’re not the only person stressing about the next steps that follow after uni. The designers on hand gave some good advice about how portfolios could be strengthened and what my work would benefit from with slight tweaks here and there.

Overall I thought the day had been coordinated very well making it hugely beneficial to all us post grads that turned up. There were plenty of speakers on hand concerning pretty much all pathways that were processional and knowledgeable but more importantly approachable. If D&AD are doing any other events in the near future I shall definitely be attending.  

RED SEA: PORTFOLIO VISIT 1

Yesterday I had my first portfolio at the talented Red Sea tattoo studio in Manchester. I had previously organised to speak with tattooist Dan Morris but ended up speaking with the owner of the establishment Laurence Stogsdill. I was massively nervous and worked myself up about it as I haven't shown my work to any professionals other then uni tutors.

I went to talk to Laurence during their consultation hour expecting to be in an out in about 15mins but was pleasantly surprised having spent a good 40mins chatting. I was a bit skeptical showing a tattoo studio my work, as the majority is editorial/live brief work slightly edging towards tattoo art in the work I'm producing at present. Laurence mad me feel at ease and relaxed throughout the duration of my visit and set a friendly atmosphere. He mentioned a few times that he didn't usually get the opportunity to see illustration students work, which was a nice change as it was usually peoples drawings of tattoo esq imagery wanting a job.

As well as taking my finished portfolio, I also brought along a printed version of the 8x8 publication that featured my illustrations and a sample of my rough ideas and sketches.

Altogether Laurence had nothing but kind words to say about my work and gave me some little pointers on how he thought bits could be improved and benefit from slight changes. A few pieces such as the Macmillan Books illustrations and some other first year work he said were very popular styles of working and even though he liked them thought that they didn't really show my personality that much. More recent projects including the freak show and Victorian superstitions and beliefs were a prime example of what I was passionate about and he could see this in the images.

A pointer he gave me was to try and illustrate some happier and up beat pieces as my work doesn't need to be all doom and gloom to show my potential. After going through my portfolio we discussed what he would expect to see from a person applying for an apprenticeship job as hopefully that is a career path I would like to go down. More sketchbook work showing initial ideas generation is what he likes to see to make sure the person isn't just a one trick pony and can think about imagery as well as just having the craft to execute it.

I found him a pleasure to talk to and feel like we got on very well on a whole. Unless I blocked out any negative words I'm pretty sure he liked my work and seemed to have enjoyed talking with me. I was annoyed at myself for not having a business card printed as i feel it would have been beneficial to have left one with him. In saying that he added me on facebook later that day so fingers crossed that I might be able to follow the visit up with something in the not too distant future.

BUT ISN'T THAT YOUR JOB?

The other day we had the privilege of a listening to a lecture by Craig Oldham (designer at Music studio) entitled But Isn’t That Your Job? It was a great incite into the relationship between how art director and illustration work with once another following six projects, each with different artists. The first four illustrators were part of a campaign promoting the rise of Manchester City football club through four posters of their key players.

The work was created by (in clockwise, from top to bottom) Michael Gillette, Chris White, Todd Slater and Shepard Fairey.

Craig came across as being a very genuine and down to earth chap from my side of the hill and definitely wasn’t afraid to voice his opinion. The talk opened my eyes to the role of an art director and cleared up any stereotype people might have of them.

He described the full ins and outs of a job stating with finding the right man right through to negotiating payment with either the artist themselves or an agency. He definitely showed that when an art company is picked to execute a job that they really care about the end result so that it suits the clients demands and not just their own. It was dead interesting and really informative especially at the end when he answered questions from the group and touched on the subject of presenting work to an art director.

We were all set a brief to design the lecture poster for Craig's talk with the chance to win a set of the Man City posters and some pretty cool books. The only limitations we faced were the usage of only two colours and had to include relevant typography. I decided to do some research by looking on Craig's website where there's quite an in depth section about his likes, dislikes and hobbies. I went for the standard weird approach and clocking it said he liked cups of tea, Prince and the fact he's from Yorkshire, I tried to combine the three together. My final image consisted of Prince rising from the steam of a cup of tea, with a Yorkshire rose in the foreground. It was me being a bit weird and didn't really turn out how I planned in my head but struggled with the hand generated typography. My poster can be seen below. Needless to say I didn't win but hadn't much hope behind it.

WEBSITE RESEARCH.

Having a website is a crucial and almost essential method of getting your work viewed by the public eye when working as any sort of freelance artist. However, whether it does your work any justice is a different matter as so  many people seem to mess them up. Many sites can quite easily come across as being half arsed and unprofessional, leading to the standard of work looking lower then it really. The text and writing style used must reflect the artist’s personality in a friendly and professional manor as its quite easy for a potential client to dismiss work due to bad grammar and overconfidence. Getting the balance right could be the difference between getting a job and being left staring at the phone. Giving a piece or art credit where its due can also be a challenge especially when trying to capture the essence of a hand generated piece and displaying it digitally. On saying this there are tons of sites out there that tick all the right creative boxes and present their work spot on.

 There are loads of template-based sites out there that can easily help you build up an idiot-proof page (if like me you’re completely clueless when it comes to URL’s and HTML codes). Last year I used cargocollective to make an online portfolio site that has loads of easily changeable layouts and styles to use or you can customise them if you wish. I don’t think that I’ve used mine to its full advantage yet as I’m pretty bad at remembering to update and promote it. Having looked around at various other online portfolios and sites I’ve come to the conclusion that mine could do with a little bit of tender loving care as well as my blog. I’m currently in the process of creating a new site through a friend having just recently purchased my own domain so having done some research into fellow artists I think I know what sort of atmosphere I want mine to create.

Travis Millard’s website has always been one that stood out against the rest for me. You can tell a lot of time and effort has really been put into it and it reflects the humour and fun aspects of his work. You’re greeted by a flood of different creatures and object that flow from one side of the screen to another each time you click on a subsection. The ability to rearrange and move different images and pieces around pulls you into the site letting you explore the creativity the site has to offer. In doing so you instantly find yourself hooked and entertained with Millard’s work.

Another site that’s at the complete opposite side of the spectrum to Millard’s site is work by Collate. Although the site is incredibly aesthetically pleasing to the eye and easy to use I’m not overly sure whether Collate are a design team/graphic designer/agency as there is no about me/contact section (unless I’m being completely blind). Anyway, the site on a whole looks very graphic and runs incredibly smoothly, giving you the option to slide through each project from left to right effortlessly. Other then the fact that I have no idea who the artist is or how I’d get in touch if I wanted to hire them for work its overall a very well designed site that gives of a level of high sophistication and class.

I think that to compliment my work, I would be better suited to something little more structured like the amazingly talented Dan Matutina. His work is displayed in a grid like system through little thumbnails showing projects with the title placed over the top locked in by a neat list of options centred at the top of the page. It compliments the slickness of his artwork and gives you’re an incite to multiple pieces without having to click through them one at a time. Matutina’s logo is viable on all pages of the site, which I like and think it’s important to brand yourself correctly like and he’s achieved it well.

Having looked and thought hard about how I eventually (over the next few weeks) want my site to look I have decided to customise the cargo profile I already have using HTML coding. I just need to tidy the typeface up and play about with the thumbnail aspect of displaying my work. It’s under construction at the moment but keep your eyes peeled at www.kris-sale.com for what I hope to be a visual treat.

ILLUSTRATIONS DIGITAL FUTURE.

Whether we look it or not, the age we currently live among is one the most fast paced times man has seen. Swamped with technology and branding everywhere we look, various ports of advertising are appearing everywhere. The main source of this of course, is the Internet. People’s lives are constantly infested with tweets, pokes and posts. New ways of reading the news are cropping up at every turn with inventions like the kindle and ipad but is this going to put the final nail into the casket of illustrators and publishers? I came across a pretty interesting article on the BBC website about how the sales of books are decreasing due to electronic devices and the closure of high street shops such as Borders. It made me think about the future of work concerning illustrators.

It was inevitable that the next leap for technology would be a form of moving, digital literature (not quite as advanced as the papers in Harry Potter) and Apple seem to be doing a pretty good job by releasing the first of its type and now following that the ipad 2 with tough competition from Amazon’s Kindle.  The way we view literature seems to be changing into smaller bite sized chunks rather then, the sometimes viewed as off putting paragraphs and pages we were so used to seeing. So could the ebook be taking things back to basics in some respects by kick starting people’s love for reading where some would find it a repellent? The fad for new gadgets and what’s hot could give reading the boost it needs by using the ebook as a gimmick to get people back into reading literature instead of wasting their time getting square eyes.

As a designer (sort of), I think it can be looked at two very different points. When people discuss the work of illustrator 9/10 would stereotype the role being to illustrate book covers and imagery for storybooks. If the invention of digital reading is to carry on at the pace it’s doing so, could it eventually wipe out the use of tangible books and magazines? This could seriously affect job roles from all points of the spectrum involved in publishing. Sellers, illustrators and publishing companies could be hit pretty hard leaving only the writers themselves untouched so to speak.

Then again, this could give illustrators a real boost and chance to get involved in something quite alien to some peoples usual practise. With the ipad containing not only still imagery but moving GIFs and short animations, this could merge the boundaries of illustration and moving imagery together to create something new and exciting. With more and more people investing in these different types of technology it could be seen as a massive form of free advertising for the artists to gain more recognition. If the modern man is now too lazy to read bigger pieces of literature then they are perhaps more likely to be attracted to the ebooks appose to the real thing. Hopefully this might turn things round for the artists and significantly increase the exposure of their work in the public eye leading to a bigger client base?

I’m not overly sure about what’s in store for the future of illustration. I can be quite a tech geek at times and love playing about on my iphone but for me personally, I don’t think you can beat reading a nicely printed magazine with the smell of fresh ink on a good quality paper. My eyes start to boggle if I read for any amount of time online so I usually end up printing the article out anyway and reading on paper. I’m all for the traditional proccess of the printing press and much prefer the analogue way of reading but if us artists can gain from it then perhaps digital illustration could be the only option in years to come. I’m all for which ever will benefit the artist most and enough more people to read. Not sure they both go hand in hand though…

MONIKER ART FAIR.

I was lucky enough to stumble across the Monkiker Art Fair whilst wondering through the streets of wonderful Shoreditch having just left the Nowbrow gallery last weekend. Probably a bad thing as I left wanting to purchase most of the prints on show, all being sold for a fare few pennies indeed. Set in an old Victorian warehouse (the Village Underground) the building alone was pretty amazing.  

                             

Having stopped to watch some graffiti artists (one half of Dabs Myla) make their mark on the side of what looked like an old tube station I noticed a crowd of people walking through a shady looking entrance so I thought I’d follow. At first I thought I’d walked into a private show but then was approached bya women with a programme. Turned out it was the Moniker At Fair, an exhibition first debuting last year that celebrates and promotes the international scope of street art and more. It differed from most shows I’ve seen including both gallery style exhibits and signature project spaces to suit all tastes. I thought it was great to see what I class as more contemporary, less mainstreamy art in an exhibition as there were lots of designers, artists and illustrators displaying their work that I’ve only ever seen in magazines or online. Very cool. 

 

 The fair showed off many international as well as UK based artists including Shepard Fairey, Dabs Myla, Nate Frizzell, D*Face, BLDG with exhibitors such as Scream, The Garage and Stolen Space. All worth looking at.The Dabs Myla space really jumped out to me as being one of the strongest pieces and seemed to engulf the viewer into their world of fun (pictured above). I was reading about the duo in this months Juxtapoz and seeing their work in the flesh really represented how they came across in interview.

Having seen so many alternative artists doing so well its definitely given me a well needed push to get into gear with my own practise. I think I'd always stereotyped that it was only the fine artists that made a living off their work but this group of work has told me otherwise.

 

NOBROW.

Last weekend it was time for one of my trips down to the “big smoke”, which seems to becoming more and more frequent (something I could get used to). I had a digital surf of the interweb to see what treats London had in store for me and stumbled across that Nobrow had a Ben Newman exhibition on beneath the shop. I’ve been a big fan of the Nobrow team for a good while and spoke to John Boam last year concerning my PDP aspect of the uni course so I thought it would only be polite to have a look. And I’m glad I did, even though it was MUCH smaller then I anticipated.

The upstairs section of Nobrow consists of a small shop crammed with zines, Prints, books, plush toys, stickers, tea towels! (Pretty much anything else you can think of that you can stick a print on). I think I was in the shop for a good hour or so browsing book after book when I know it was time to go downstairs when the friendly staff were looking at me as if to say, “Are you going to buy anything?”

The first thing that smacks you in the face you when you go downstairs is the amazing smell of screen-printing ink which I can’t get enough off. I honestly thought the gallery was going to be on a much larger scale but the quaint size of it gives a real feel for the work on show. MASKS is Ben Newman’s solo exhibition consisting of a set of brightly coloured prints as well as wooden mask interpretations. The exhibition is based around how Newman has looked at ceremonial masks in various countries and combined them with his interests in geometric shapes, folklore, strange creatures and colour theory. Newman (with the help of his father Colin) made the three-dimensional masks as a response to the prints and compliment each other really well.

Its not often you seen an artist experiment with dimensions out of their comfort zone but Newman has definitely hit the nail on the head here as they looked amazing.  The prints alone would have worked well as they are a typical example of how Newman manages to fuse bold shapes and bright colours to create his weird and wonderful creatures BUT along side the masks they really came to life. The masks oozed personality and charm, bringing the exhibition to life.

 Having not been to the Nobrow shop/gallery before I can confidently say I’ll definitely be making another visit next time I’m down.  They always seem to have something pretty cool going on so check out the website for events and publications.

Apologies for the bad phone photos.

GRAPHIC GURU EVENT.

Yesterday afternoon the first (I think there’s more to come) Graphic Guru’s even took place in college, where tutors had selected a small number illustrators that had graduated from Stockport that are now working successfully in the professional trade of illustration. This talented bunch of people consisted of Chris Madden, Ben Jones, Liam Bardsley, Natalie Wood, Rose Lloyd and Pete Adlington. They’d been asked to talk to the third years to open our eyes a bit to what we had to come and share their tales of experiences in the real world working with clients and live briefs. If you haven't already seen their work, have a jump over to their sites as they're all amazing at what they do!

It was a really good experience to be able to go around and casually chat to each of them about what they were currently working on, previous work, what they were interested in and their inspirations and motivations. We didn’t really have massive amounts of time but I still gained some good tips when dealing with clients through their own personal experiences with studio visits and art directors. It was nice to hear it face to face from them and that sometimes it doesn’t always run the smoothest but you learn from the little mistakes and build up more confidence as time progresses (not too much though).

After working our way around each of the illustrators we were then separated into smaller groups and assigned to one “Graphic Guru”. I was incredibly lucky to be placed under the watchful eye of Chris Madden, which I’m massively happy about. As well as being  in reality, really talented he’s a genuinely nice, down to earth person that I’ve met a few times before and be full of quality advice along with …. Criticism. The idea of Chris’ role is to act as a sort of mentor over the next coming months that we’re able to contact in relation to our work, I shall try to my hardest not to pester.

I’m really looking forward to the remaining time in third year and feel that with the confidence of having a Guru to aid my pleas it should hopefully work out just nice.

I WISH I'D DONE THIS.

PDP (Professional Development Planning) is a aspect of the course where I'm required to complete several tasks about other artists and prep for getting a job via the use of my blog. So far I've done all my contact reports and a piece titled "Thing's That I Have Learned". I Wish I'd Done This, is a short piece of writing about an image I've seen that makes me wish I'd made it. Pretty self explanatory really.

 

There's a lot of work out there at the moment that makes me think I really need to pull my finger out if this is the sort of competition I'm going to be up against soon. Even more then that this piece in particular makes me think I really wish I'd made that. The sort of illustrations that usually grab my attention (for the time being) are digital pieces made up of different textures, hand made brushes and subtle colour schemes that make me question myself as to how they've been made. To be a bit different I decided to write about a painting.

 Thoughts of the Future was the first piece I'd seen by Lindsey Carr that made me wish I'd done it but to be honest I wish I'd done almost all of her pieces. Carr paints using incredible skill that captures detail effortlessly in a way that also gives character and personality to the animals she creates in her almost all of her paintings.

 I became fascinated by this piece mainly because of the huge attention to detail. One of the main things that stand out are the hairs on the monkeys head as well as the folds and stitches on the garment that make it look so realistic. I'm a huge fan of photo-realistic art but only if its done in a way that a camera couldn't.  The reason I like this painting so much is because it does exactly that, even though its not quite photo-realistic. The style of the piece reminds of me of old Victorian natural history books that have incredibly well illustrated images of various plants, animals and birds. The blank expression on the primate’s face gives the impression of death and taxidermy. With the flowers and foliage being arranged in such a peculiar way almost growing out of the head I could picture something like this to feature in a cabinet of a museum, in a glass jar filled with formaldehyde.

 When it comes to my work I tend to avoid working in a realistic way, as I don’t feel confident enough to achieve the standard I want. Instead I simply the things I draw especially figures by using harsh/straight shapes and lines through digital media. However when seeing work like this I’m always inspired to push the degree of detail in my work further and try to achieve a more realistic look.

 When looking at the piece it’s made me come to realise that lighting pays a huge part in making an image successful. Getting the balance of light and dark right can give the impression of depth, create texture as well ad different surfaces and make objects look three-dimensional. It helps that Carr has the ability to paint realistically but with the added bonus of using tones so well she achieves a quality that looks like you could reach out and touch it especially as I mentioned before the folds in the cloth. I’ve taken this on board when making my latest illustrations for the 8x8 brief where my main focus was to play with lighting to create depth to my piece. Even though I work purely digital I think its important to look at other methods of working and try to learn from them so I can use similar techniques in my work.  

 One of my classmates showed me the work of Lindsey Carr about a week ago but if I had discovered her before now I would have definitely liked to email her as part of my contact reports. There isn’t too much info on the web about Carr other then she’s a painter and occasional toy maker that lives on the south west coast of Scotland. I think after building up confidence through contacting other artists over the past few months I’m going to get in touch with Carr as I want to know much more about what inspires her and why she paints the subject matter she chose’s.

There's definitely a lot to learn from a piece like this and it's really inspired me to paint more in my spare time. The only way to get better at it is to practice and its evident that Carr has had a lot of experience.

ONE.TWO.THREE

Below are three pieces of advice I've been given/heard over the past year that I feel has helped and inspired me in my work from various faces around the world.

ONE.

 "Use the internet to your advantage" Kevin Dart

After hearing this from Dart it made me reflect on if I was using the internet for its full potential. I came to the conclusion that I wasn't ha.  It's opened my eyes to the amount of opportunities there are on the web to promote yourself and collaborate with other fellow artists through the means of social networks as well as getting in touch with design companies/agencies/publications. I think I ignore some sites like YouTube/Facebook/Blogger in the sense that I don't always use them to their full potential and need to realise how much I could benefit from then. In the modern age we live in I think it's important to take advantage of every possibility opening and I sometimes forget this and distracted.  Even though it sounds obvious, I'd also pretty much overlooked the fact that it's so easy to communicate with other people around the world so effortlessly. I've started to take this advice on board over the last few months by making myself a CargoCollective (online portfolio) and a Twitter account. I'm not the biggest "tweeter" in the world but I'm finding it dead useful for keeping in the know with whats happening in the art industry, upcoming exhibitions and things like limited edition art prints/underground competitions etc.

TWO.

"Do not seek praise. Seek criticism" Paul Arden

 I bought Paul Arden's "It's not how good you are, It's how good you want to be" sometime last year and it's been nothing but help in how I work. It's a book on how to succeed in life and includes an insight to the world of advertising with facts and pearls of wonderful wisdom. This one really stuck out to me amongst others and has helped a great deal. A typical situation for me when working on a brief is that I box myself and don't let people see my work until near the deadline thus leaving little time for improvement. I've learnt that it's important to get a fresh and more importantly honest opinion on you're work before it's too late.  There's no benefiting from polite compliments when what you sometimes need is harsh brutal criticism. From this you can get the full potential out of your work and push yourself to get better final outcomes.  

THREE.

"Don't get drunk of others work" – Me

Over the course of the last month when working on the 8x8 brief, I've come to realise that there's a point where you need to stop looking at other peoples work and focus on the your own.  I feel that I'm just starting to really understand how I'm most comfortable in working and that "my style" is slowly becoming evident in my latest pieces of work. Looking at too much artist influence has started to become a problem for me as I feel like I'm getting "drunk" off too many different styles and aesthetics. When I do see work I admire I tend to try and work in a similar method combined with my own process but its too evident that their work is making too much of an influence and my work changes depending on who I've looked at for that particular brief. I now limit myself to looking at others when working and its obvious that my own style is starting to appear and my work is slowly becoming consistent.

8x8 FINSIHED.

On Friday we had a meeting with the MMU creative writing course leader to discuss our work created for the 8x8 short stories that we've been working on for the past few weeks. We find out on Tuesday which illustrations have been picked to feature in the printed publication so fingers crossed. Overall I was pretty happy with how it went in the meeting and my final outcomes. I feel like I'm starting to get to grips with working in digital media and progressing from project to project. I'm still wanting to push myself by making more textured dry brushes on photshop to give a hand generated look but at the moment I'm struggling to do it without it looking dead sketchy and as if it's been done on paint ha. Both my images look much better on screen as when I printed them out to show the client the colours seemed to loose their vibrancy and almost melt into each other. Kind of guessed this might happen with it not being the best printer and me working in RGB on here. Need to tweak this if I do get picked as I'm wanting the teal highlights from the monitors and lights to really stand off against everything. My spot illustration isn't uploading so I'll make sure its up later.